Legeay: Clean cycling starts with team managers

Giuseppe Martinelli and Alexandre Vinokourov look for a nice spot for dinner

(Roberto Bettini)

The Astana riders line up in San Sebastian

(Susanne Goetze)

Roger Legeay, the president of the Mouvement Pour un Cyclisme Crédible (Movement for Credible Cycling), has issued a warning to any prospective members of the ethical body, stating that team managers must shoulder the responsibility for clean cycling.

The MPCC currently consists of 11 teams including Garmin, Argos Shimano and Europcar, with hoping to have membership approved shortly. The MPCC petitions for strong anti-doping legislation and enforces also strict anti-doping and ethical criteria that goes beyond the World Anti-Doping Agency code.

Legeay’s comments come in the wake of Astana’s publicised interest in joining the movement. Astana have had a number of doping positives during their existence with Alexander Vinokourov, Andrey Kashechkin and Alberto Contador’s clenbuterol case during the 2012 Tour de France the highest profile. Vinokourov is now the manager of the team and worked with Italian doctor Michele Ferrari, while Giuseppe Martinelli- who worked with Marco Pantani, is the senior director sportif.

“They must write a letter to the MPCC (asking to join) and then it’s up to the teams already in the MPCC to vote,” Legeay told Cyclingnews.

While Astana’s past is certainly intertwined with its present and its future, Legeay believes that the behaviour of the team management and their future conduct is the most important aspect of any potential MPCC membership bid. According to Legeay clean cycling starts with the team managers and then trickles down to the staff and riders of each team.

“We’re thinking about the future and we want more and more team mangers to come to the MPCC and share our philosophy,” he told Cyclingnews.

“It’s important that the team managers who come to us say no to doping and do everything they can to ensure that. There should be no doping in sport, in cycling and we will apply all the UCI and WADA rules. The team managers have to comply with this and the MPCC rules are in some ways stronger.”

“We’re not looking at the past, we’re looking at the future. The past is something that the UCI and WADA have to look at. They have the authority to do that. The future is up to the team managers because they have the power to organise and dictate so much within the sport in the coming years. Team managers need to have strict rules and apply them because they need to spread credibility for our sport. The responsibly is theirs to engage the staff around them. They need to employ doctors with ethical standards as well. And then the team manager needs to support his riders in clean cycling. If a manager and his team accept this then they can join the MPCC."